Tad Hilgenbrink and Janet Montgomery in The Hills Run Red: He's probably just taking her for a surprise romantic dinner or something

Grisly serial killers, zombie Nazis, monsters – all are seen during a regular outing at Frightfest.

This year was the 10th anniversary of the annual horror and sci-fi film festival, and the organisers made sure it would last in the memory. 36 movies were featured from 12 different countries, bragging 15 UK premieres and 11 world premieres.

As a life-long admirer of the genre, I’ve always wanted to attend Frightfest – a top 10 film list is not complete without at least five horror films as far as I’m concerned – but there’s always been a big problem: I’m secretly a coward.

So how to make sure I could experience the flavour of this hugely popular film festival without vomiting in terror? I decided to be fair and try for a rounded experience – a gore-fest, an indie monster flick and a Hollywood blockbuster. I booked myself into a gore-athon in the theme of mutant serial killer to ease myself in.

The Hills Run Red fulfilled all my expectations by managing to disturb me quite effectively. Nervous as I questioned my reasons behind choosing a film that was advertised by a serial killer wearing a baby mask tied to their head with barbed wire, it’s fair to say that I was a bit anxious even before the start. The movie wasn’t really scary as such (aiming much more for squelchy levels of violence and buckets of blood rather than stretching tension across taunt nerves), but the scenes of explicit torture are not easy to sit through.

It felt very similar to The Hills Have Eyes, with a deformed serial killer stalking a group of pretty young things through the woods, but it surprised with an interesting film-within-a-film Scream-style twist. The presence of veteran actor William Sadler gives desperately needed gravitas, but, as the violence increases, the cast inevitably descend into hysterical flapping. But this ‘torture porn’ was at least a much-needed fresher look at the sub-genre, despite clearly having the rusty hooks of Hostel still firmly embedded.

Alastair Kirton in Colin: A harmless pussycat

Suitably shaken, I decided to move onto my next terrifying episode, indie zombie flick Colin. This film has been lapping up the accolades in the past few months since winning critical acclaim at Cannes, famous for its £45 budget and original and intelligent angle. Colin is a classic urban zombie movie – but instead of following the story of a bunch of survivors, this film follows the fate of a single victim of the walking undead. We find the lead character, the eponymous Colin, bitten and covered with the blood of a recent fight. He transforms into a shuffling corpse and we follow as he wanders around London, occasionally stumbling across someone to gnaw on or people desperately fighting the hordes to survive. Although Colin is a zombie, terrifying to all the humans he comes across, he still manages to engage with the audience. A figure of pity, Colin epitomises the loneliness and confusion behind the monsters.

This film is an incredible achievement, especially considering director Marc Price’s financial constraints and amateur tools. The editing is slick; the script is fresh and spiked with black humour; even the gore looks realistic. And, most importantly, moments had me curled up with fingers in front of my eyes – a scene where a girl stands frozen in a pitch-black basement as sightless zombies surround her, groping outwards to find her in the darkness as they hiss, is full of relentless, pounding tension.

Colin – official trailer

Nails furiously chewed by now, I moved onto my last horror movie of the weekend, the world premiere of Hollywood blockbuster The Descent: Part 2. The original Descent, released in 2005 and directed by Neil Marshall, was a masterclass in gory tension – I’m not ashamed to say it reduced me to a screaming, jumpy little girl, clinging to my friends.

Shauna Macdonald in The Descent: Part 2: I think she looks quite sane, really.

I was interested to see whether the sequel would manage to follow up the success of the first. It would surely be tricky, because the UK audiences of The Descent only saw an ending where lead character Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) remains trapped in the caves, whereas US audiences saw Sarah escaping.

Turns out they solve this problem by ignoring it – the film starts by showing Sarah running into a car on a nearby road, still covered in blood from her ordeal. Once the authorities realise Sarah has reappeared, with no memory of the experiences in the caves, they decide to look for her missing friends and re-enter the labyrinth with Sarah along as a guide.

Unfortunately, that’s all the ‘new’ part of the script over with. Anyone who is familiar with the horror genre instantly knows which characters will be bumped off and almost exactly how the monsters will show themselves. The film follows the plot of the original to the letter, with director Jon Harris using all the same tricks: a video camera with night vision; electronic equipment that beeps at inopportune moments; they even find the bodies of the first group of friends. It’s a successful film in its own right, and I definitely found it scary, but compared to the first one it just feels like a copy. And what’s the point of a copy?

At least the fans at Frightfest helped me keep my dignity (although not my fingernails) intact. No matter what screening I attended, the crowd raucously applauded the gruesome killings or the victim escaping, hollered and cheered, cackling and screaming for all they were worth. Traditional zombies, blood-smeared victims, and even an impressive home-made zombie Nazi, wandered through the halls of the Empire while chatting merrily about the movie they just saw.

Many have bemoaned that this year’s Frightfest was missing the ice-chilling tension seen in last year’s showings of The Orphanage and Let The Right One In. I’ll agree that those types of films were absent this year – but the festival was still huge amounts of fun and a credit to the horror industry.

Would I go again? I’m already booking my spot…

The Hills Run Red is out on Region 1 DVD on 29 September 2009.
Colin is released nationwide on 23 October 2009.
The Descent: Part 2 is released nationwide on 4 December 2009.

By Melanie Green